i welcome general michael hayden who ran the national security agen agency. he is now principal with the chertoff group. welcome back to the show, michael. >> thank you, fareed. >> let's focus on this issue of eavesdropping of senior officials of allied governments. there's a distinction about collecting metadata, traffic and phone calls and emails from across europe. tell me how would it work if the national security agency would tap the cell phone of senior leader of an allied government, who would have made that decision and what would the process have been? >> it depends on the senior leader. depends on the intelligence requirements. very often, fareed, what you get are very specific intelligence requirements from our national command authority and they are laid out to the intelligence community and then the intelligence community goes forward and lays out a collection plan the best way to get that very needed information. occasionally, fareed, occasionally, what you have is political guidance kind of being placed on top of your operational planning. i ha